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In The Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze argues that Nazism can only be understood as an ideology that was the product of a “society in transition” from a relatively agricultural and “backward” country into an industrialized European power. Hitler and the Nazis sought the ability to colonize its neighbors and alter “the European distribution of land, resources, and population” under Nazi control (196). In order to build the Nazi empire, Hitler relied on intensive mobilization and coercion to mass all possible resources to rearm Germany and then launch overwhelming attacks on several fronts. According to Tooze, the ideology of German racial superiority and the autarkic nature of the Nazi economy were not just wild ideas, but a serious reality that Hitler and his followers strived to achieve. Much of Hitler’s racial angst was directed towards the Soviet Union, were both Jewish, Slavic, and other populations soon became victims of Hitler’s racial war of annihilation.

While the U.S. was a growing threat constantly on Hitler’s mind, a threat that was closer to home and immediately undermined his domination of Europe was the Soviet Union. Moreover, Hitler specifically referred to the Soviet Union as a “ruthless Judeo-Bolshevik enemy,” thus combining his anti-Semitism with anti-Communism. The marriage of anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism was not unique to Hitler, but he was certainly the most extreme example. In fact, Hitler believed in an international Jewish conspiracy that bankrolled not only the “Bolshevik dictatorship,” but also Washington and London.[1] One irony in Hitler’s abhorrence of Bolshevism was the fact that both ideologies were “undoubtedly collectivist at their core.” After all Stalin and Hitler were both concerned with the industrialization of largely peasant societies, and both shared affinities for aspects of modernity such as Fordist production lines. However, Hitler had no problem contrasting his vision of a superior German racial community with the “Bolshevik cult of primitivism.”[2]

Not surprisingly Hitler found plenty of time in Mein Kampf for rants against his “Judeo-Bolshevik” enemy. Tooze eloquently summed up Hitler’s view on the Historical significance as follows:

“The essence of politics was ‘the historical struggle of nations for life’. This had manifested itself in a succession of major clashed: Christianity and the barbarian invasion, the rise of Islam, the Reformation. The French Revolution marked the beginning of the modern era. Ever since, the world had been moving ‘with ever increasing speed towards a new conflict, the most extreme solution of which is Bolshevism; and the essence and goal of Bolshevism is the elimination of those strata of mankind which have hitherto provided the leadership and their replacement by worldwide Jewry’. Compromise was impossible: ‘ A victory of Bolshevism over Germany would lead not to a Versailles Treaty, but to the final destruction , indeed to the annihilation of the German people.”[3]

With such a radical and racist view of international history, Hitler’s war plans soon had the explicit goal of preventing the “Bolshevization” of the earth by annihilating of the Jewish race in Europe. Furthermore, Hitler not only believed in an external Bolshevik threat, but his rise to power in Germany itself was to a large extent the defeat of German communists and “agrarian Bolsheviks” who were competing with nationalists in proposing solutions to peasant discontent, land reform, and other economic ills.

In sum, the fact that he applied the term Bolshevik to both internal and external enemies is indicative of the concept’s rhetorical potency during the interwar years. It is also worth noting that Stalin shared an equally antagonistic view of Nazi fascism and that the battle between these two ideologies was one of the major factors in the terrible methods and outcomes of the Second World War, particularly the horrific destruction of European Jewry and Slavic populations.

Further Reading:

Hirsch, Francine. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 2005. (For great comparisons of Bolshevik and Nazi ideologies surrounding nationalism and race)

Hitler, Adolf. “Adolf Hitler Warns the World of the Menace of Bolshevism: Main Part of the Fuhrer’s Closing Speech, 1930’s.” A book of primary sources found in the Harry Ransom Center Book Collection. Call no. HRCMIN 18016 BW 12.

Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Tooze, Adam. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. New York: Penguin, 2007.

Waddington, Lorna Louise. Hitler’s Crusade: Bolshevism and the Myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy. New York: Tauris Academic Studies/ St. Martins Press, 2007.

A Look into the Gulag Part 1: A Review of The Unknown Gulag by Lynne Viola

Lynne Viola’s The Unknown Gulag argues that the attack on kulaks (wealthy or successful peasants) during the 1930’s and their exile to desolate special settlements was the first and most heinous of Stalin’s purges. These internal “colonial” settlements were the foundation of the Gulag “archipelago” and set the precedent of repression in the Stalinist “empire.” Furthermore, the attempted elimination of the “class enemy” during the colonization/collectivization of the Russian peasantry was a disaster. The project was unrealistic, created by Stalin and his ideology, had poor planning, met resistance, and only exacerbated the socio-economic problems of the USSR. Viola guides the reader through the full chronology of the dekulakization campaign by exploring kulak identity, repression, transport to exile, the settlement conditions, and the reckoning of officials and organizations that mobilized a war against the peasantry. The book is a masterful account of all aspects of dekulakization, with the only real flaw being that some of Viola’s more interesting points could be compared with Stalin’s other crimes to solidify her argument.

From the start, Viola’s narrative humanizes the victims by bringing accounts of the horrific deportation process to light and contrasting that reality with the madness of the propaganda and methods used against the kulaks. By outlining the conditions in the countryside, initial orders from above, the “classifications” of kulaks, and the workings of the OGPU (Secret Police), the reader understands the archival evidence of kulak repression in the context of the inter-war USSR, as families were loaded into trains and subjected to unspeakable conditions.

The actual building of special settlements and the lack of preparation for the surviving deportees display how the Soviet Union constructed internal colonies “on the fly.” Viola highlights the ridiculous hypocrisy of a Soviet policy that hoped to exploit labor, only to have many able-bodied people die because they had no shelter or food. The first hand accounts and upset Soviet officials confirm the nightmarish conditions, particularly during the famine of 1932-33 and when describing the fate of kulak children.

Because Viola has so well arranged her archival research in the book, the creation and experience of the Kulak identity is cemented in reader’s mind. This identity became part of all the victims, even the ones who came back into the Soviet mainstream through service during World War Two or repatriation after the death of Stalin.

While providing almost every detail about the events and people involved in dekulakization, one absence is a more thorough comparison with some of Stalin’s similar crimes like the deportations of various national groups. The plight of Polish women and children portrayed in Katherine Jolluck’s Identity and Exile comes to mind. This type of comparison would allow the reader to better comprehend the evil precedent established by the initial kulak deportations and further Viola’s argument that the crime was Stalin’s first of many purges.

In sum, any student studying Stalin’s Soviet Union must read the Unknown Gulag. This account of “dekulakization” is vital in understanding how the Bolshevik experiment with the New Economic Policy (NEP- limited market economy with communist party control) abruptly ended in the late 1920’s and Stalin launched the radical industrialization and collectivization goals of the Five Year Plans. Viola successfully humanizes the victims of Stalin’s first mass attempt at reshaping the economic and social structure of the Soviet Union. The “other Gulag’ of dekulakized peasants and the settlements where they suffered as “state enemies” now has a fitting account that will preserve their memory.

Book Reveiwed:

Viola, Lynne, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements, Oxford University Press, 2007.

Further Reading for Different Perspectives on Deportation to Special Settlements:

Jolluck Katherine R., Exile and Identity: Polish Women in the Soviet Union During World War II, Pittsburg: Pittsburg University Press, 2002.

In Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, Stephen Kotkin argues that historians must go beyond totalitarianism and address all aspects of how Stalinism and Bolshevism operated. According to Kotkin, while Stalin is correctly labeled a tyrannical despot, we must not overlook the fact that the Soviet Union under Stalin was a unique civilization where socialism was defined as the opposite of capitalism. This civilization was built around industrialization and the upward mobility of former peasants as they created a socialist society in the context of capitalist crisis and emerging fascism. The author succeeds in providing a core sample of life and experiences at all levels of Stalinism while showing the great paradox of a socialist society that was aided by capitalism from the beginning, but was defined as “anti-capitalistic.”

Kotkin uses the building of the Magnitogorsk steel mill and Socialist city to highlight this new society. This society was an internal colony based on capitalist industrial models (namely Fordist production) and promoted ideals of social welfare and progress, a new urban geography, a new social identity defined by labor, a shadow market economy, a “Bolshevik” language, and a state religion with values that were tested and reinforced by the terror.

The chronology of the city and factory construction structure the narrative and archival evidence underlines how the civilization’s elements can be observed throughout the different stages of Magnitogorsk. Starting with barren land, the Magnitogorsk steel mill is built through a combination of Western technical assistance and Stalin’s radical will to build a global industrial power. As the center of the book, the steel mill provides examples of Soviet “gigantism, immoderation, and refusal of realism,” all while the successes of the mill become a powerful symbol for Soviet propaganda both at home and abroad.

The “socialist city” built around the steel mill worked in tandem to construct the new Soviet identities of the workers and their families. Everyone was part of a master planned internal colony where society was centered on the embracing of socialism and industrialization through learning to “speak” Bolshevik. While Kotkin agrees that “there were sources of identity other than the Bolshevik crusade,” to survive in the Soviet system people began to police themselves so that “the ways of speaking about oneself became refracted through the lens of Bolshevism.”[1] Many people believed in the socialist project, but even those who didn’t learned the state language so that they could interact with Soviet society. Kotkin shows how this “Bolshevik” language, values, and beliefs were radically imposed from the top-down on society in a continuation of the October Revolution that began with war on the peasantry.

While some reviewers have claimed the work to be apologetic for the excesses of Stalinism, Kotkin’s impressive display of Stalinism in action is constantly contrasted with the ironies and hypocrisies of a system that eventually collapsed. The primary resources describe the terrible conditions and absurd situations that underline the regime’s “monopoly on power and inefficiency.” Another point the author makes is how the largest social organization in Magnitogorsk was actually the market of illegal trade and most people in the new society had “petty-bourgeois” traits. The violence of the “self-immolation of the party” during the terror helps the reader understand how the society continued to function even as many of its own are being sacrificed.

Kotkin’s work provides a crucial examination of Stalinism that reminds us of the importance of coercion in the system while allowing us to fully understand all facets of the Soviet socialist experiment. Furthermore, the creation of the civilization is put into the context of capitalist industrialization and European enlightenment ideas that made an attempt at a state-built socialist utopia possible. Stalinism and its reality, from state terror to social mobility, now have a fitting volume.